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The
prolific Romanian-born, Long-Island-dwelling poet Stefan
Gheorgiu Theodoru has produced a bilingual collection of
one-liners (which he persists, annoyingly, in calling "liners")
in tribute to his countryman Ion Pillat (1891–1945),
one of the forerunners of the Romanian haiku movement. Pillat,
among his other literary experiments, wrote 116 single-line
haiku-like verses the he published first in his 1935 book
Poemele într-un vers ("One-line Poems"),
a title that serves as Theodoru’s subtitle. The form,
as Theodoru explains it, is fixed: a title plus a verse
that is divided into parts of seven and six syllables. Occasionally
the three elements of Theodoru’s verses can work together
as they would in a haiku:
The
Blind Man
Hand in hand with a child to show him the grove.
More
often, however, the title sets up a lyrical metaphor:
Baby’s
Breath
The stars of heaven sprinkled in the garden.
or
becomes an aphorism or a witty epigram in the manner of
J.V. Cunningham or A.A. Ammons:
The
Wise Man
He finally realized that he knows nothing.
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